


Southwest Magic

by paradoxpangolin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Bloodstone Academy AU, Gen, Pre-Night Vale, post-Harry Potter Series, written for a friend's birthday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3972847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxpangolin/pseuds/paradoxpangolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos was a college student working towards a degree in magiscience. A semester abroad studying in the field was one of the requirements for the degree, so he applied to several places and people as a research assistant - one of whom was famed magizoologist Luna Lovegood. He never expected a reply, or the semester that followed after one came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Southwest Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [interdimensionalhitchhiker84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interdimensionalhitchhiker84/gifts).



The waitress at the little café wore floating shoes that probably had fragments of magic carpet in the soles. There was a fish tank full of species not covered in Magical Biology 101 near the door, its inhabitants watching every diner as they ate. Half the dishes on the menu were in a different language that looked older than the Pyramids.

Carlos settled – squished himself, really – even further into the corner of his booth. So an unnerving, but not really surprising, place for an appointment with famed magizoologist Luna Lovegood.

The last part of that sentence still sent disbelieving shivers down Carlos’s spine. Luna Lovegood. Famed magizoologist (an understatement at the least)…wanted an appointment. With him.

Were the butterflies in his stomach nerves, excitement or the look that fish was giving him from across the room? Who knew. Who ever knew with emotions. He focused on deep breaths – she would be here pretty soon, and he couldn’t let her first impression of him be anything less than what he wanted it to be.

If everything went well today, he would be able to start his required semester abroad for a degree in magiscience. Applying for the position of Luna Lovegood’s research assistant had seemed like a long shot at the time, and he’d only sent off the application letter as an afterthought, a well-why-not to go with the duller, if more achievable, dozen other options. When a week later a message with the subject line “Thunderbird research!!!!!” and sender Luna Lovegood had appeared in his inbox, Carlos had nearly fallen out of his chair. The other seven acceptance letters he received never even got a reply.

Luna – er, Dr. Lovegood – wasn’t supposed to be here for another 15 minutes, but being early was one of those things that would help a first impression immeasurably. Carlos had a list, in fact. He pulled it out of his coat pocket, partially to break the staring contest he’d been having with the unnerving fish. Lists were helpful. Dr. Lovegood probably knew what species the fish was.

_How to make a good first impression (in professional situations)_  
\- Arrive early  
\- Sit up straight  
\- Smile  
\- Dress nicely (no stains, lab coats, T shirts or jeans)  
\- Sit still! 

And it went on.

Was there anything Carlos could do right now that would help to improve said first impression? He checked. The answer was no. 

The floating waitress brought him his coffee. He nodded to her and sipped it thoughtfully.

Eventually, three minutes past the time the appointment was scheduled to begin, the little bell hanging on the café door jingled cheerfully. Carlos looked up, heart suddenly beating rather fast.

In breezed a towering pile of scrolls and books in various states of shabbiness, which promptly plopped down across from him and spilled all over the table. No one batted an eye at the appearance of a blond woman in her mid-30s from behind the pile, a blond woman with thick pink tortoiseshell glasses, an untamed and chaotic ponytail and an ecstatic grin on her face. Carlos realized suddenly why they hadn’t met in the Leaky Cauldron – this place not only wouldn’t mob the magizoologist with fans and autograph seekers, she fit into it like a hand into an old and familiar glove.

The woman put her elbows on the table and leaned across the table excitedly. “Thunderbirds haven’t been seen in the wild for over 40 years and before that it wasn’t widely believed that they existed – white American wizards rarely listen to those that were on the continent before they knew it existed. They’re thought to be a subspecies of the roc, one of the four known shapeshifter species, and classed as a five on the Ministry’s danger scale. But you knew that, I hope, and you know me, and I know you – or, _of_ you. Nice to meet you, Carlos; you can call me Luna. Now – what else do you know about thunderbirds?”

Carlos liked Luna. 

He was still kind of dazed by how Luna had just swept in and started talking – for all he knew, she wasn’t even sure that he _was_ Carlos. She’d never seen him before that he was aware of. But of course she would have ways of knowing – she was Luna Lovegood, after all.

The waitress with the floating shoes came by again to ask for their orders. Carlos, being about as broke as your average college student without a job, just asked for a coffee refill. Luna ordered something long and complex, and seeing that Carlos wasn’t going to get any food, offered to buy him lunch. Carlos gratefully accepted. He _really_ liked Luna.

He also knew a fair bit about thunderbirds. Or – he liked to think he did. The longer he talked with Luna, the more obvious it was that she was an encyclopedia of magizoological knowledge while he was more of an undersourced article on Magipedia. For every factoid he threw out, Luna returned with three more.

“Wingspan the length of a barn and could have been mistaken for dragons – “

“ – by Western colonists, yes, however the Native Americans of the area had an in-depth and likely highly scientifically accurate mythology surrounding it, particularly its weather manipulation abilities – “

“ – its shapeshifting capabilities – “

“ – and its angry and intelligent personality! Sadly much of the mythology was lost during Western colonization – “

“ – but they’re thought to be cousins of rocs found in northern Africa and parts of Asia – “

“ – and theorized to have evolved in the Americas during the time of Pangaea and migrated before the continental drift?”

Carlos grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Miss Lovegood, you’re one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met.”

“That’s probably true. But I still don’t know _enough_. That’s why we’re going to America, of course! When do you want to leave?”

The question caught him off guard, but he managed to recover. “My trip is already approved with Hogwarts Higher Education and everything – I’d just need to pack, I guess.” Even as he says it, Carlos felt his stomach jump. He hadn’t been out of the country before.

“Same here. Brilliant! What about this Saturday, here at eleven thirteen sharp? Can you make that?”

“I – I think so,” Carlos said. That was in four days, enough time to prepare.

“Fantastic! See you then!” And Luna gathered up her books and scrolls and swept out the door as fast as she had come.

That was eight weeks ago, although it seemed like a lot shorter. Carlos still hadn’t gotten over that meeting in the café. It was exhilarating, and wonderful, and kind of stressful – he hadn’t been prepared for that at _all_ , or rather, he’d been prepared but for quite the wrong thing. Most good things came with an element of stress, though. And this was most definitely a good thing.

The American Southwest was littered with mining and frontier towns. Some were abandoned except for their own peculiar dusty ghosts, some had straggled on through time while appearing to have hardly changed at all in the last century, and some had burgeoned into great metropolises surrounded by concrete highways that were filled with a bizarre magic of their own that Carlos and every other magiscientist couldn’t quite make sense of. He and Luna, in an old beat-up RV that didn’t need a driver and stayed smooth no matter how bumpy the terrain, were about as far from any of these as one could get. They’d left any sort of road some time ago and now the desert stretched away as far as Carlos could see in every direction. He wondered how thunderbirds had managed to remain mysterious so long in such a bare and open environment.

“We’re not sure,” said Luna dreamily. (Carlos had come to realize that dreamy was Luna’s natural state, and the burst of charisma in the café had been a product of excitement.) “They may roost in the mountains to the east, but that’s an awfully long way to fly even with a barn-sized wingspan.”

Ah. He must have spoken that thought aloud, then. Something about the sound of the constant rumble of the RV’s wheels under them blurred the barriers between thought and speech. He wasn’t sure if it was the infamous Southwest magic or just his brain.

If it was magic, it was certainly not the strangest kind of magic he’d encountered out here. He’d known magic varied greatly by location, but he’d never had the chance to experience it before, and this particular variation of magic was just plain unsettling.

“Of course it is,” Luna had reassured him when he’d first hesitantly confessed this to her. “Britain’s magic is very controlled, I’m sure you’ve noticed, compared to this even away from the cities. It’s the same with most of Europe, and it’s largely because of our penchant for witch hunts back in the formative era of European magic. The difference between life and death was often how well you could control your magic, and so the magic adapted to its users and became a thing to be controlled. In the Americas it’s much different – their formative era was before European colonization, so magic conformed to the needs of the people using it most – the Native Americans, many tribes of which treat magic as a gift and a symbol of connection with the Earth or their deities. Some believe the magic itself to be a deity – and due to the nature of magic, they weren’t technically wrong. So magic is a lot looser here, and tends to use people more than they use it.”

Carlos had been unprepared for this torrent of information, but he listened intently through all of it. He was familiar with the conformance theory and the concept of formative eras, but his professors didn’t tend to explain it through comparison to British magic, or use terms as easy to understand as Luna had.

Back in the present, Carlos stared out the RV’s window, watching listlessly as the featureless landscape flickered past. Luna was tapping placidly on her laptop, probably recording field conditions for the day (sunny, again, and hot, again). Carlos knew he should be doing that as well, but the monotony of the surroundings left him sleepy, and his computer was on the other side of the truck. The absolute middle of nowhere was considered the best place to look for thunderbirds because they were hardly ever seen where there were people to see them, and so that’s where Luna and Carlos had been for most of the semester so far. They hadn’t had much luck – in fact they’d only caught glimpses of what might have been the giant birds three times, and each time they were gone before any pictures could be taken – but Luna assured him that it was far better than nothing. “At least we know we’re on the right track.” Currently, however, they were on their way to the location of one of the only confirmed and major sightings, to speak with one of the witnesses.

The witness was a wizard, which should have encouraged Carlos somewhat, but he was a Southwestern American wizard, which didn’t. Luna, who didn’t know much more about him than Carlos, said he’d attended Bloodstone Academy in Night Vale for five years but dropped out rather than take the Standards, the American wizarding standardized tests. But Carlos didn’t know a lot about Bloodstone Academy – not many people did – so that wasn’t comforting in the slightest. He’d also been mysteriously “abroad” for the past two months, and refused to give them any more information on the matter. Carlos didn’t know if this was just a paranoid-middle-aged-white-American thing or if the witness really had something significant to hide, but either way he distrusted him on principle.

The witness – Jeremiah Caldwell – owned a small ranch several dozen miles from any other sign of civilization, protected by anti-Muggle enchantments so thick and hostile Carlos felt sick to his stomach as they crossed the property line. Luna, being pureblood instead of half-blood like Carlos, didn’t seem to be affected.

After passing by a few acres of fenced-in pastures scattered with contented-looking cows, the RV rolled to a stop in front of an old, two-story white house. The path to the door was lined with stiff, dusty brown shrubs and there was an illegal crup-Rottweiler hybrid tied up to a doghouse on the lawn.

Caldwell was sitting in a rocking chair on the wraparound porch, beer bottle in one hand and wand hanging casually in the other. Carlos wondered how he managed to make simple rocking back and forth look so ominous. He stared at them stonily as they walked up the path, which made Carlos incredibly uncomfortable, so he decided to focus on Caldwell’s wand instead. On the off chance this wizard suddenly flipped and started hurling jinxes at them, it was a good place to watch, and besides it was fascinating.

Unlike Carlos’s own wand, this wand looked like it had been snapped straight off a tree. It was knobby and twisted, with the bark peeling off in places and a point that looked like it had been whittled by a knife. It was also thicker than the wands Carlos was used to – more of a short staff, really. Colonial wizards had made their own wands by breaking branches off of magical trees, and the Americans had stuck by this tradition despite the developments in modern wandmaking.

“Mister Caldwell, right?” asked Luna, shaking the man’s hand. “I’m Luna Lovegood, and this is my research assistant Carlos. I couldn’t help but notice as we came up, you’ve caught a keleck in the dreamcatcher above your porch – they’re fairly uncommon and do no harm, so if you wouldn’t mind placing some sulfur around the catcher it’ll be able to free itself in no time.”

Caldwell blinked up at them slowly, his face set in an expression Carlos couldn’t decipher – either he was glaring at them or the sun was in his eyes. His face was covered with wrinkles and faintly sunburned, with an aggressive, bushy mustache and squinting, suspicious eyes. Faded gray wisps of hair stuck out from under an old and battered Stetson. “I ain’t never seen nor heard a one a them things you said, an’ I can tell as well as you that my catcher’s empty. So ‘less you’re tryna say it’s invisible – “

“Oh, it is,” Luna interjected.

Caldwell stopped, stared at her, said “hmph” quietly and looked away.

“So you’ll do it?”

“You’re not here to talk to me about dreamcatchers, miss Lovegood,” replied Caldwell gruffly.

“You’re right. My bad. Kelecks are just so interesting, though, any time you’d like to learn more about them…” Luna trailed off absently.

Caldwell didn’t seem inclined to restart the conversation himself, so Carlos jumped in. “How old were you when you saw the thunderbird, Mr. Caldwell?”

The rancher shifted his gaze minutely to Carlos before answering. “I reckon this was sometime ‘tween ’65 and ’70, so…sixty? Somewhere thereabouts. I remember my Muggle brother was always trying to convince me to retire back then.” He gave a short laugh.

“Did you keep any documentation of the event?” asked Luna. “Perhaps a journal, or a photograph…”

“No, miss, I was never one for journaling, and cameras in those days was nowhere near compact enough to carry ‘round. Just m’brain. Still sharp as any photo, mind you,” he added. “Memory can be a fickle thing at this age but it’s always been a friend of mine.”

Luna pulled out her phone and began recording the conversation, and Carlos hurriedly followed suit. It was always good to have a backup set of data. “Can you tell us about the sighting?” Luna asked.

Caldwell seemed pleased, despite his initial prickliness. He leaned back in his rocking chair. “Now this was back before the Congress of Magic’s ban on hybrid livestock, so I was still able to earn a good living offa them part-Graphorn cow breeds. You’ve probably never seen ‘em, you’re too young, but let me tell you they were some a’ the finest this side of the Rockies. Taller’n me at the shoulder, and the males with horns so big they could gore you by just turning their heads. Ain’t no surprise the eagle suddenly took a fancy to ‘em.”

“Thunderbird,” supplied Carlos automatically.

“What the hell ever, boy. So I’m out in the fields, cause I could still do that in those days, when me and my brother hear this great screech from above.” Caldwell spread his arms with a creaking of joints. “And we see this bird, bigger’n the hippogriffs those traveling magic zoos used to cart around, and it’s swoopin’ down an’ headed straight for us.” He chuckled. “That’s what we thought, anyway. Truth was, it was just lookin’ to snatch a cow, but we didn’t know that at the time.”

“Can you describe its appearance?” asked Carlos. He had a notepad out already and his new DashDoodle Quill, an offshoot of the Quick Quotes brand.

“Sure thing,” said Caldwell, although he seemed disgruntled at the flow of his story being interrupted. “Looked like it had the body of a hawk, I guess, but with – not quite bird wings. Had feathers ‘n all, but…” He snapped his fingers. “Those new feathered dinosaurs they’re sayin’ they discovered! Its wings looked like that. Oh, and I forgot to say – after it left, there was this great crack of thunder and we had what’s still the biggest rainstorm I ever seen. Thought the cows were gonna drown by the end of it.”

Carlos scribbled furiously. Luna nodded. “Just a few more questions, Mr. Caldwell. Then we’ll be done. Which direction would you say it swooped down from?”

After glancing at his phone to make sure it was still recording, Carlos allowed himself to tune out. He knew Luna was asking Caldwell questions like the weather the day of the event and his (now deceased) Muggle brother’s reaction, and that they would go over the answers thoroughly together afterwards. In the meantime, though, he was drawing, hurrying to get down as many details as he could from Caldwell’s description.

Later, they sat in the RV together around the table, sharing a pot of Luna’s odd, sharp-tasting tea. The sky had clouded over as soon as they had left, though it brought no relief from the heat, and Carlos’s T-shirt stuck to his skin in the humidity. Luna was transcribing the recording meticulously onto her laptop.

“I’ve never actually heard of a keleck before,” Carlos said.

“They’re very shy,” replied Luna vaguely. “And they haven’t been officially classified by the Ministry yet. My fiancé Rolf is working on hurrying them along while I’m out here.”

“How did you discover them? They’re permanently invisible, right?”

“Yep. We just did,” said Luna, even more vaguely. Carlos frowned.

“If they’re permanently invisible then how can – “

A high, keening shriek ripped through the air, piercing and painful even through the windows of the RV. Carlos and Luna stared at each other for half a second, then grabbed their phones and scrambled outside.

The wind had picked up, and was whipping sand and dust through the air into Carlos’s face. He put his sleeve over his mouth and squinted to where Luna was pointing, unable to hear over the roar of the wind and the long, deep rolls of thunder. His heart skipped a beat, then compensated by going double-time in his chest.

The thunderbird screamed again as it dove toward them, its claws extended and its great wings beating in time with the thunder. Carlos’s feet were frozen to the spot, but he managed to unlock his phone and hold it steady enough to capture a shaky video of the bird as it approached the RV. A split second of panic – _is it going to eat us?!_ – engulfed Carlos’s mind, but no, he and Luna weren’t really big enough for its typical diet – right?! _Right?!?_

Carlos dove to the side as the thunderbird’s wings blocked out the sky and it sank its claws into the sides of the van. There was a horrendous screech of metal and Carlos clapped his hands over his ears. And then the thunderbird was gone, flapping away towards the mountains. Carlos tore his gaze away from the bird to see the RV – deep gouges slashed in its sides but still very much there.

“Come on!” shouted Luna over the growing thunder Carlos wasn’t sure was natural. “It’s getting away!” She raced back to the van and wrestled one of the doors open. Carlos followed her numbly inside.

_“Aetra,”_ Luna muttered, and her phone sprouted mechanical wings from its case. It floated over her shoulder to continue steadily filming out the front window while Luna tapped the dashboard frantically with her wand. “Come on…” Carlos hurried over to help, phone still clutched in one hand.

Finally, the van groaned from the engine and sputtered to life despite its injuries. “Follow that bird!” Luna instructed, and it jerked forward. Carlos held onto the seat as it accelerated, grinning with excitement as he refocused his camera on the receding black shape in the sky. They were catching a thunderbird, live on film!

The rain started as soon as they began to catch up, great fat droplets turning into a cloudburst that reduced the visibility to almost nil even with the windshield wipers. He wasn’t sure how useful the video was at this point, but he kept recording because he was a scientist and a scientist recorded _everything_. Including this storm. It was a bizarre storm, far too severe for the middle of the desert at this time of year, with nonstop thunder and lightning and massive roiling clouds. Luna was saying something, but it was impossible to pick out her words from the din of the storm. Carlos was exhilarated nonetheless. A creature so rare there was only one living magical witness, so elusive some still didn’t believe it to exist, caught on irrefutable video by him, Carlos! This could be the defining moment of his career and he wasn’t even out of college!

A yell caught Carlos’s attention, and he looked over. Luna was shouting something now, but the thunder rolled over her words and Carlos couldn’t hear it. She tried a few more times, with Carlos staring blankly, before giving up and reaching over the empty driver’s seat to yank the wheel to one side. The RV wrenched off course, and Carlos stumbled back against the door. 

The storm died down as quickly as it had blown up, and within thirty seconds Carlos was blinking against the familiar desert sunshine. “Wh-why’d you do that?” he stammered in the sudden silence.

“Look what it flew over,” Luna replied, sounding disgruntled.

On the horizon was a cityscape, incongruous against the barren desert around them. A small, dusty sign could be seen several hundred feet down the road, and although Carlos couldn’t make it out he was sure he knew what it read. _Welcome to Night Vale._

“Oh,” said Carlos, eyeing the gradually disappearing speck in the sky with disappointment.

Luna nodded. “Animals can pass over or through, but if we’d entered the city limits it’s hit or miss if we’d be able to leave without help.

Carlos knew this was true, but he couldn’t help staring back at the town almost wistfully as they turned and drove away. He clicked off his phone and slid it into the pocket of his lab coat.

As a magiscience major, Carlos was very familiar with the concept of Night Vale, even if he’d never seen it in person. Magiscience was a fairly new discipline that had only gained momentum in the decades after the Battle of Hogwarts, and while it had fairly solid theories for many things, there were several areas that defied explanation. Such as the formation of magic in the American Southwest, and the effect it had on even slightly magical towns within it.

The theory of formative eras of magic dealt with the inevitable culture clash brought about by exploration and colonization, not just the different types of magic. Unformed magics would usually conform to the magic of the colonizing culture, but once two formed magics were forced to interact, neither could come away unchanged. Most of the time, the different magics merely merged and formed a hybrid of the two (contrary to early magiscientific beliefs, cultural assimilation did not affect the strength of the magic of the assimilated culture), but every scientific theory had one thing it just couldn’t explain, and this theory’s was the American Southwest.

For much of the 19th century, during the massive American push west, two incredibly different forms of magic were forced to assimilate to each other incredibly quickly. It didn’t help that both human sides of the clash were entrenched in conflict – not an uncommon occurrence in circumstances of colonization or conquer, but one that always made the hybrid magic more volatile.

That was where history got fuzzy. Sources such as journals, newspapers and stories were fairly common through much of wizarding history, but what with the massive upheaval of several groups and the subsequent chaos of the wizarding population, communication and documentation of this became difficult. Even the keenest magihistorians only knew of the possible causes and overarching results.

Magic in the American Southwest was unlike magic anywhere else in the world. It seemed to function as expected throughout much of the region, except for a few oddities such as a higher than usual concentration of magical species and occasional mild psychological effects. These effects couldn’t quite be explained concretely and had no constant symptoms, but when looking at the overall history of the region it explained several things. The reason the Southwest was considered a significant magical anomaly was the cities.

Five large cities in the Southwest – Night Vale, Pine Cliff, Red Mesa, Desert Bluffs, and Las Vegas, in order of decreasing severity – showed the effect of Southwest magic like no other. (Many small, often abandoned mining towns with odd names could nearly qualify, but they were both not too severe and largely insignificant because of their size.) In these cities, magic had infused itself into the buildings, the people the creatures, the very air itself – while still behaving like something that functioned to be used. The only problem was, it could be used not only by the inhabitants of the cities but also by the infused magic. The magic used itself to create more magic that didn’t have anything to do but divert into the surroundings or make more magic itself. In these places you didn’t go looking for magic, you adapted to the magic around you if you wanted to live.

These areas were known as magisaturated areas. They were rare, but not unheard of – the Forbidden Forest was one – but none were as intense as the cities, and none were ever inhabited by humans. The exact characteristics of a magisaturated area varied, but to some extent time was usually slowed down or otherwise interfered with, leaving or entering the area was extremely difficult (impossible for Muggles in the cases of Night Vale and Pine Cliff), magical beings were common and often differed from those outside the magisaturation, and the borders between dimensions were much thinner.

(The last point led into all sorts of discussions, from the possible reasons for the other effects to the origins of magic itself. But that was getting into advanced physics, something that was definitely not Carlos’s field of study.)

The two most analyzed of these cities were Night Vale and Las Vegas – the latter because of its relatively low risk and unusual appeal to and effect on Muggles, and the former because it had a wizarding school-slash-research-center, Bloodstone Academy.

Carlos had considered applying to study there this semester, but had backed out at the last minute because he couldn’t find enough people to go with him. It was usually considered ideal to enter Night Vale with a team, to help keep a grip on outside reality and to make leaving easier when the time came.

“It wasn’t actually trying to eat us, was it?” he asked, looking up from the draft field report he was preparing. “It could tell what the van was. Just defending its territory, or something?”

“Oh, doubtless,” Luna replied absently. “They’re very intelligent, you understand. Guarding its territory, yes, but also swooping us and then letting us live. A warning, in all likelihood.”

“That won’t…stop people from trying to study it, though, will it?”

“No, of course not. We’ll just be more prepared.”

Luna had repaired the van and they’d driven back to the interstate and found a cheap campsite for the night after a real dinner at a truckstop restaurant. After the day they’d had, they deserved it, she had said, and Carlos agreed.

Now the only question was what to do for the rest of the semester. Continuing their research now would be dangerous, so it was looking like time to head home to Hogwarts – and Carlos was oddly disappointed. He liked the desert, and didn’t want to leave.

That was probably the low-level psychological effects talking. Carlos couldn’t remember liking deserts before.

In the end, they stayed in the campsite until the field report was done. Luna was already emailing Rolf about starting the publishing process. The paper would take the magizoology community by storm, and Carlos’s name was right under Luna’s on the title page – he didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified. There was no way, however, that he wasn’t going to get full credit for the semester.

**************************************

“Carlos?”

“Hey, Luna.”

“You haven’t called in a while. Did you hear about the team from Bloodstone that’s trying to get out and go look for the thunderbird?” 

“Yeah, I saw it in the Prophet, actually.”

“Pretty great, huh? In a fearful-for-their-safety sort of way. It’s been 3 whole years, though – you’d think they would have done something like this sooner…”

“Absolutely. Luna – listen, I’m calling because I’ve figured out what I’m doing for grad school.”

“Really?! Carlos, that’s fantastic!! What is it?”

“Bloodstone Academy Research Center, studying magisaturation and its effects.” Carlos could hear his smile leaking into his voice. “I’ve got a _team.”_

“That’s wonderful! Keep an eye out for kelecks, will you? I’m fairly sure they originated in Night Vale. When do you start?”

Carlos winced as the (much smaller and more densely packed) van hit a bump in the dusty road. “Twenty minutes? Sorry I forgot to tell you earlier. Everything was just exciting.”

“Oh, I know that feeling. Best of luck – I mean that!”

“Thank you, Luna. Hey, I gotta go – I’ll talk to you later,” said Carlos, and hung up.

After his and the team’s presentation on what they were planning to investigate, and a stop by the radio station which led to a scarily high magisaturation report, Carlos was given the keys to a small apartment in a complex next to the academy. There was already a radio on the shelf, he noticed as he dropped his suitcase on the bed. That was kind of weird. He switched it on and began to unpack.

_“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead as we all pretend to sleep. Welcome…_

_“To Night Vale.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wasn't going to put this up, but my friend Lyn interdimensionalhitchhiker84 said I should, so I did! Hope you enjoyed it (despite the occasional self-indulgent infodumping)! :D


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